Comparing the Ideation Quality of Humans with Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

Traditionally, ideating new product innovations is primarily the responsibility of marketers, engineers, and designers. However, a rapidly growing interest lies in leveraging generative artificial intelligence (AI) to brainstorm new product and service ideas. This study conducts a comparative analysis of ideas generated by human professionals and an AI system. The results of a blind expert evaluation show that AI-generated ideas score significantly higher in novelty and customer benefit, while their feasibility scores are similar to those of human ideas. Overall, AI-generated ideas comprise the majority of the top-performing ideas, while human-generated ideas scored lower than expected. The executive's emotional and cognitive reactions were measured during the evaluation to check for potential biases and showed no differences between the idea groups. These findings suggest that, under certain circumstances, companies can benefit from integrating generative AI into their traditional idea-generation processes.